The scene in the East Village this afternoon looked a lot like this one, from The Wicker Man.…
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The New York Times reports that's going to be happening all the time this summer. And it's all (maybe) because of Johnny-come-lately "any moron can tend bees, and I certainly am one such moron" amateur bee keepers who decided to enhance their lo-fi lifestyles by establishing their own rooftop apiaries.

"A warm winter followed by an early spring, experts say, has created optimal breeding conditions. That may have caught some beekeepers off guard, especially those who have taken up the practice in recent years [after a decade-long ban against raising honeybees was lifted in 2010]."

Here are two macabre visuals courtesy of the Times that encapsulate the hysteria nicely:

When Happy Miller, the Seaport restaurant manager, saw tourists flailing their arms in a cloud of airborne black specks late last month, he closed the glass door and quietly panicked.

"There's a stigma to a beekeeper whose hive swarms," said Joe Langford, who watched from his kitchen window in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, on a Sunday in May as a 20-foot-high cloud of his bees blotted out the sun before landing on a nearby tree, to a few muffled screams below.

There are currently 182 hives registered with New York City's Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, though some estimates place the actual number of hives maintained within the city as high as 400.

Basically, you and I and everyone we know have been secretly keeping bees in secret. We are all to blame for turning what was once a beautiful island into a buzz-filled bee-swarmed hellscape. We all have blood and honey on our hands. There are no innocents.

It should be noted that swarming honeybees tend to be docile and that no injuries have so far been reported, unless you count violent mental scarrings as injuries.

If you notice a swarm of beez outside of the trap, quietly panic and then call 311.